China’s New York consulate is being used as a major hub for the Communist nation’s US espionage efforts, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told The Post after an NYPD cop was arrested and charged with spying for the Chinese government.
And it’s likely more diplomats and agents will be arrested, Pompeo told the paper in a sit-down Wednesday.
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“They’re engaged in activities where they’re crossing the line from normal diplomacy to the kinds of things that would be more akin to what spies are doing,” Pompeo said when pressed on the goings-on inside the consulate on the West Side Highway.
Pompeo’s remarks follow the arrest last week of an NYPD officer charged with serving as a secret agent for the Chinese government a charge China has denied and the US government’s decision to shut down the Chinese consulate in Houston in July, after two military assets there were charged with trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine research.
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“We closed it because they’re engaged in espionage and that is a legal term. It’s not just a spy novel term. It is a very data-driven, analytic, fact-based analysis that says, ‘No, this is espionage, it’s unlawful, and therefore, we’re going to send you back,’” he said on the flight back from Wisconsin on Wednesday.
During a speech to state lawmakers there, the former CIA director warned that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials were engaged in a full-scale propaganda operation at the state and city level and identified the Big Apple’s consulate as “very politically active.”
NY Post
